This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to any real persons, places, or institutions are coincidental, and purely a product of the author's imagination.

You can ask her about her past, ask her where she went to school, and she'll tell you. You won't be very interested, and you'll probably forget.

Ask her what she does for a living. She gets paid regularly, doing some low-key work somewhere, but it somehow won't matter much to you when she tells you about it.

She's fun to be with. She's a looker, so sexy. She can move. She can dance you till you drop, and she'll buy you your drinks sometimes.

Her friends are a lot like her. They are all well-groomed, mannered, soft-spoken but interesting.

You can't help but want her, if you're a man. If you're a woman, you can't but admire her grace and vivacity.

After you get to know her (if you are one of the lucky ones) you begin to wonder about her. She is at home with almost any crowd, always on the ball, with it, cool. She is witty, conversationally bold. It isn't hard to figure out what she believes in, works for, thinks about. Is it? Do you really know her? How much of the real person do you know?

She doesn't talk about feelings much. She has them, you can tell, as she laughs at a joke, drips a tear at a movie, cries out as you make love to her.

She never asks for advice. She seldom solicits opinions. She confides little. She is here with you now, though, so that doesn't matter. She wants you, wants to be with you. She devotes her entire attention to you, and you know she loves you. You love her. So why the unease?

Do you remember when you first met her? You were captivated by her softly glowing eyes. You wanted to be with her, to have her talk only to you, to share her presence thenceforth. You circulated around, had a few drinks, talked with some people. Conversations worked around the room and soon you were talking to her. Soon enough, you were talking only to her, others had drifted away from the two of you as chemistry was obviously at work, and you knew you would go home with her.

You were sharing each others gazes as she told you quietly, for your ears alone, softly, succinctly, I am a vampyr.

You ignored this bit of conversational non-sequitur and kept to the subject at hand, trying to find out more about this enchanting stranger. She had just told you all you really needed to know, and your mind refused to accept it.

There are no such things as vampires, you would have thought, if you had thought about it at all. You would think it was a joke if a bunch of them told you they were going to nibble on you. It's true. There are no such things as undead corpses that rise nightly from the grave to feed on the blood of the living. There is Lace, though. She's real, and you can't help but notice how real she is as you get into your car to drive her to a hotel.

Sex was wonderful with her. Afterwards, you can't sleep. She is too much fun to be with. You stay up most of the night, talking, making love, falling in love. You told her you were a writer, and now she wants to tell you a story.

She was a nice girl once. You think she still is. She is nice, but she is not a girl. She went to a good school, and got good grades. She was athletic, but not into competition. She is still very strong, you believe her on that score. She had wrapped you in one serious embrace a few minutes before.

She says she is serious about her condition. You say you didn't know she was sick. She says she told you. You say, does she have AIDS, or something? Or something, she says. I am a vampyr, she says, and this time you get it. She sees your fear: could this be real?

It's real, she tells you. I won't hurt you, she says, you've just been making love to me. Why should I hurt you now? I don't like to hurt people. You could be nice and donate a pint of blood, but I won't make you. C'mon, she tells you, it's not like on TV. If they talked about black people on TV like they talk about us, TV stations would be burning down all over the place. Nobody likes being lied about like that.

Blood? you say, and she says, yes, we do do that, don't you know? They got that right enough... but all the rest is bullshit. Seriously, though, you're safe enough. It's not like I'm starving! She snuggles closer in the bed, and she's warm, like a kitten, and soft. She kisses your nipple, and you shiver.

I was just a normal girl, and then somehow, I just grew up to be this way. A guy tried to molest me, and I found out something about myself. I can fight. She runs her hands down your thighs. She stands up for a second, and goes through a complex, deadly little dance, much faster than your eyes can follow. If you had been standing at the focus of that dance, you'd now lie dying on the floor. She bends over and kisses you, and murmurs, but I'd rather make love than war. I hate killing people. It makes me feel dirty.

I hadn't known it, but I was starving then. When I killed that rapist, I found out what I was, because I got blood in my mouth, and it tasted like food. Everything else tasted like sawdust in comparison. It took me a while to figure out that there were other ways to get what I need besides killing people. There's ways. You don't need to know, so I'm not telling you.

Lace is lying next to you, curled all around you, and you are debating the merits of casual leavetaking versus precipitous flight.

Please, she says, don't be afraid of me.

I've never been to bed with a vampire before, you say. Vampyr, she says.

Well, I haven't, you continue. I don't know how to act. What are the rules?

Usual rules, she tells you. (What, you wonder, are the usual rules?) How do you know you haven't? Would you have known if I hadn't told you?

No, you admit. She was just the woman you wanted. You tell her that.

I still am, if you're not going to be a jerk about me. It's not as if I were a Republican or something, she says. I'm still here, and so are you. If you're scared, you can go. I won't prevent you.

I guess I'll trust you, you say. She seems safe enough. You know that if she had wanted to hurt you, she could have already done it. I'll stay, you say.

Thank you, she says. I've been lonely, she says. Be a friend to me, and I'll be a friend to you. I'll try to never force you. If times get tough, I'll try not to beg for too much. I need friends. Be one?

I'll try, you say. She is still lovely, so beautiful, her eyes are like glowing jewels in her unlined face. She still smells sweet, and her voice carries such sincerity. Can you tell me something about yourself, you ask, tell me how it is to be you, to be one of you?

It's not that different, she says, from being a normal person. The world is still the world. The people in that world are just the same. The facts of life don't change. All that's different is that I am very strong, very quick, and I need some human blood now and then.

Do you need any now? you ask, wondering why you will volunteer for something you would otherwise die fighting to avoid.

I could use some, she tells you.

I'm healthy, you say.

She looks away from you. She takes a deep breath, and says, Will you, this one time only, freely and of your own will, give of yourself that another might live?

You answer, yes. You've given blood before. She takes your arm, and says something, and flicks one of her nails across your arm. A drop of red wells up from a cut vein, and she licks it off. She looks at you, and asks, are you OK?

Yes, you say, go ahead.

In about ten minutes, she is done. She has taken about a mouthful. A new band-aid covers antiseptic on your arm. Was that so awful, she asks? She glows with an inner light, and you still want her to be yours. How do you feel, babe? You feel just like you've given blood. A bit woozy, tired, you think you'll take a nap. It has been a hell of an evening.

Thank you so very much, she says as you drift off to sleep.

You wake up at noon, with a bit of a hangover. Lace brings you orange juice and coffee. Such a sweetie. She ought to be, you think. You gave her your best. Your best manners, your best attitude, your best behavior. She gave you what you wanted, a night with her, her love, her best moves. You gave her a present that you didn't have to give, and she's being the sweetest she can be.

Take it easy, she tells you. You don't want to exhaust yourself. I still want to tell you a story, she says. It'll pass some time. I can tell you some neat stuff about us.

I'm a nice girl, she begins. I've been straightforward with you, most of us wouldn't be. Most of us would die rather than tell an ephemeral, and most of us would rather kill than let our secrets be known. Our biggest secret is what we are, of course. We are beings very much like yourselves, but we use a different set of neurotransmitters, a very much faster set. We are not undead. We are very much alive. Sunlight doesn't bother us, garlic is for pizza, and you may have noticed that I wear a cross. God has no more power over us than He has over you, (and no less) and the artifacts of religion are icons to us, not weapons. I'm trusting you with this based on your apparent open-mindedness. I could be being so naive. Please, don't reveal this to anyone, the person you tell could be one of us, and then you might die.

We are not all gentle. We certainly needn't be. We are made to rule by might, and we can be cruel, as are cats to mice. My people think of me as a bit of a pervert, and I am rather an outcast, for I am cursed with empathy for my prey. They laugh at me, for I have too little of the contempt and arrogance that are the hallmarks of our race. I could be toying with you now, she tells you, and they would love it, it would show that there is hope for me. You think on what she just said, and chills return. She laughs, and says, think twice about everything, man. She says, you never know. I am being honest, now aren't I?

You think about it twice.

Don't worry, she says. It's past time for worrying. If you were going to worry, you should have worried when I first told you, before you brought me home with you. The situation has gotten out of hand, and there is very little you can do now, she tells you firmly.

You were the stranger at that party, she says, and no one knew where we were going. We left alone, and there was no one to see where we went. You could have never made it home. You could have been a feast for some hungry folks, and your remains would never have surfaced. Instead, she reminds you, you took me home, and we had our ways with each other. We both got what we wanted, didn't we? she asks you.

You agree. You were stupid. You are lucky to be alive. You tell her all of these things, and she kisses you. You couldn't have known, she tells you. We make such a point of ourselves being imaginary that only the insane, simple, or those who've known us take anything like adequate precautions.

What precautions, you want to know, would have been effective?

You can't defend yourself against us physically, if that's what you mean, she tells you. Remember, crosses, garlic, all of that is bullshit. Disinformation, don't you know? Society is your only defense. Let people know where you're going, when you should be back. Be careful when you're isolated. Be respected, be loved. Be someone who will be avenged. Let people care. Let somebody love you. We can't fight a neighborhood, a church can find us out, there's no way we can run faster than radio. Be somebody.

You see, she continues, we exist by being the unseen, the unnoticed. We keep a low profile. We're interchangeable parts. We love being cogs in the machinery of a modern society, we love the machines, one of us can move out and another can move right in. Who notices dishwashers? Nobody cares so long as the job is done.

If you're just another statistic, if you have no friends, no family, we'll be your friends. We'll come over and visit you, call you on the phone, we'll pull you right into our world. You'll think you have friends.

All of the while, though, you'll be less and less in contact with the world, more and more isolated. You will just waste away, and you will have no one to turn to. Except for us. We'll continue to be your loving friends, so caring, so supportive. You will die in our arms, happy to the end that we were such good friends, who stuck with you till the end. Some friends.

You like to party? We party too. We party like mad, we never have a shortage of fun stuff. We'll get you high. Real high. We'll help you get stoned, get drunk, get a fix, whatever we can do to make you think a little more fuzzily. Anything to get you out of your world, and into ours.

We can take our time. We have all of the time in the world. There's millions more like you if you get away.

You stir in bed, your coffee is cold. Why are you telling me this? you ask her. Life's not fair, she says, it wasn't fair for me to have been born like this. I'd like to see a little fairness anyplace it can exist, she says, and I can afford to be fair, for I have the power.

You were nice, she says. You were shy, but brave in your shyness, and you were nice to me. You wanted to know me, not just have my body. My friends thought that made you just that much more toothsome, so I staked my claim on you.

Wake up, OK? she admonishes you. You were a lamb in a slaughterhouse, and you didn't know, didn't care. Now you know. Don't ever go there again. They know me, they know my weakness for people, they might consider you unfinished business.

I'm trying to wake up, you say, I don't want to be a lamb. I want to live. How can I tell you apart from us? What do you look like? you ask her.

We look just like anyone, she tells you, obviously, or we would have all been killed off long ago. (People are not very tolerant of beings like, but unlike themselves; we're the reason) We can recognize each other, of course, but the differences are subtle, and are more behavioral than physical. (For some reason, she doesn't look you in the eyes as she says this, and you suddenly note the greatly convex curve of the cornea. The curve is so great that as you gaze at her eyes, a refracted image of the pupil seems to float within the volume of clear jelly that makes up the cornea. You're suddenly aware that this must give her vastly better peripheral vision, and you note also that the eyes themselves are set ever so slightly more into the corners of her skull, and that the opening defined by the eyelids goes quite a bit further back towards the ears, curving up in a manner that somehow strikes you momentarily as reptilian, and then, strikingly, you flash for a moment to an image of the stylized eyes of royalty in Egyptian tomb paintings... As you study her eye, it rolls to face you, looking directly sideways, and she grimaces slightly, as if she has felt your sudden realizations. But she rolls her eyes to look at the ceiling for a moment, letting it pass, and continues...)

Mainly we look like college students, or yuppies. The only way you could be sure to avoid us would be to hang out with geriatrics, and even then you might run afoul of the truly old ones. Our main hunting grounds are major universities and their environs. We can just rotate from campus to campus. People disappear all over the place. Especially people without many friends, or orphans. I told you that. We can make one of you last a long time for a lot of us.

Shivers chase each other up and down your back. That's horrible, you exclaim.

So's veal, she retorts.

I don't eat veal, you tell her.

You would if you had to, she says, if you were starving you would eat veal, and if it was all you could eat you would eat veal.

You ask her if she really only subsists on human blood.

Of course not, she says. I didn't say that right... Blood is just an additional requirement, like Vitamin C is for humans, and for us as well. It doesn't take much. What you gave me will last me for about a month. I'm not sure why, she adds pensively, we need it, but we do. I think maybe there is a weakness in the enzyme systems in our bodies... and I think we must also have a special enzyme which prevents clotting, which allows us to digest blood and extract the iron we need. I know that there are anatomical peculiarities. We eat a lot of regular foods. We have short intestines, like carnivores, and I was never able to stomach much vegetables. Fruits are OK, especially citrus.

She falls silent, and you have nothing to say. You drink your cold coffee, and she cuddles up to you. You hold her and she caresses your face. You notice that she has not ever put her hands to your neck, has never trailed her fingers down the veins of your throat. She seems to not want to tempt herself. You reflect that this is a situation where paranoia would be quite justified, and perhaps, knowing that, she wishes not to give any unnecessary reasons. You ask her, do you like being what you are?

I am what I am, is her answer. I've never been anything different. I've just got to deal with my personal reality. It would perhaps be nice to be what I'm not, but that's not a possibility. I have to "suffer the cruel slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", I've got no way out besides suicide, and that would be extremely difficult, and I can't make myself do that.

No guilt, you ask?

Oh, piss off, she says. Of course I have guilt. I told you that I am outcast because I can feel guilt. I've had to kill a few times. I didn't like it then, I wouldn't like it now. Some of the others like it, have made it something that goes beyond what you'd think of as art, but I can't stand those ones. Some have got this attitude that because we've always had our secret little war on that there will always be a war on. They feel that the end always justifies the means, and overkill is preferable to surgical tactics. They tend to underestimate Normal humans, though, whereas I have a healthy dread of the ingenuity of small people in fear of their lives.

Do you consider me a small person?

Not a bit... or not yet. You are exactly the same age as me, and it's evident that advances in human medical technology will possibly give you the same life expectancy that I have... perhaps millennia. My hope is that the same technology will permit my kind to live with your without any need for enmity, without us needing to hunt you, without your needing to search us out and destroy us in pre-emptive defense. I want a peace with Men.

But what about those others?

They want to dominate, to clandestinely usurp control of your civilization, or failing that, to bring it down.

You think about that one for a while. You don't like it a bit. Sounds like science-fiction to you. So do vampires -no, vampyr - and here you are discussing interspecies relations with one.

You know, she tells you, you are on the right track with that thought. We are strangers, aliens to you, and while you've been searching the skies, First Contact is happening here, now. In your bed.

Shit! you exclaim, are you reading my mind?

Pretty much, she tells you. Mainly emotional states, and given what I know of you, parallel processing allows me to fill in gaps in my perceptions... but if we can paralyze you mentally, you bet we can read your minds. Or maybe just their reflections in your body-language. That's when your kind usually dies: when you become aware of what we are. We couldn't let you run off and tell, now, could we? Remember, if your medical technology can manipulate DNA, it can certainly compare genetic structures, and this comparative genetic technology is greatly feared by our kind, as it may soon definitively reveal us for what we are, unless of course we can direct control of it. Hell, even X-rays can show us for what we are - and so we avoid medical imaging except where the machines are operated by our own kind. Fortunately for us, we're very healthy, and hard to hurt. Doctors of your kind don't get much business from our kind...

What happens to me if I'm walking down the street and one of your kind senses a raised-consciousness about vampyrs in me?

Mostly you'd probably just be thought of as a paranoid or something. We don't like paranoids - not at all. Some people are, well, like canaries in coal mines - they become very nervous when we're around. They may have no conscious idea that we're vampyrs, but when they smell us, something happens to their chemistry - they start to go crazy, usually paranoia. Very frequently, they start hearing voices that tell them to harm us. Probably evolution in action, anyone whose chemistry changes to make them combative certainly would be a good warning system to their companions! And so we hunt them mercilessly. So if you see a vampyr, don't be scared... someone who knows us for what we are and is afraid is the greatest danger to us, and sure to become a target. So maybe you should read everything you can about us, ponder it a lot, look for the clues to root truths that may be hiding within... or hang out with me, get used to me, and then you won't jump everytime you recognize us. Keep in mind that it's one thing for one of us to be known for what we are, or to be suspected, anyway. It's another to be feared for what we are. As for just plain crazy people, we don't usually worry about the insane; if you were just plain crazy they wouldn't have to take you out of the game. They figure you'd do it yourself, that you'd violate the societal norms that were, after all designed to protect your kind from my kind.

By the way, we often take advantage of those norms you've set up to protect us from you, reversing a game is something we've had to get good at. We often, when fearful of exposure, will try to unbalance those we fear in an attempt to get you to violate those norms... and if you escape your own lawmen, you may flee into our waiting arms. How 'bout that?

One of our best defenses is that we aren't all that different, that the law doesn't recognize our existence. If you were to be found standing over one of us with a knife in your hand (though I doubt that it could ever happen), you'd be tried for murder. There would be no autopsy; cause-of-death would be evident, and we will be claimed by "relatives", and instantly disposed of under religious auspices. Ordinarily, we insist on immediate cremation. We tend to pass ourselves off as a misunderstood but tolerable minority wherever we are, like maybe French in Japan, Spanish in Canada, Arabs in Brazil... We might try, as an example, to pass ourselves off as just some wierd foreigners, with odd customs. Nobody will be interested. Legislation requiring autopsy without exception will never be passed. We fund the ACLU and such organizations very heavily on that score, and an attack on religious exemption to autopsy we will view as an attack on us. We deal with such attacks with Draconian ferocity. Your house would burn down, your employers be ruined, your bank records wiped or falsified. The IRS will come after you. So would we, in person. All that would be left of you would be a bad stink around your name, and a couple of full bellies amongst us.

I don't want that to happen, you say.

Damned right, she says. You've got to remember that we've been around about forever. The only culture that has been around longer than ours is that of the Australian Bushmen, mainly because we didn't know about Australia, and never had a chance to either influence their culture or to collapse it. Though actually, we don't really have that much of a culture... we just are what we are... and we have our own little ways.

We have an old, old strategy. We wait until someone establishes a kingdom, and we become warriors. The best warriors get knighthoods, then baronies, then duchies. There are no better warriors than us. We soon rule in each kingdom, if not as the kings and emperors, then as the war-princes. A new empire raises itself, and we become the adjutants, then the generals. Men develop militia, and we move in and soon we direct the men in those militia. If we know where the patrols are, we can do as we will where they are not.

We make ourselves wealthy, and wealth perpetuates itself. This former advantage becomes a great problem today - we used to own our vassals, they were part of our lands, but with your own banks, with your own accounts, you become free of the land, of mind-numbing drudgery, of starvation through taxation. America used to be beautiful for us also, for this was a wild land, with the freedom to move about, to change our names, to defend ourselves with your laws, with our might, with our unerring aim.

Now, our wealth is regulated, and try as we might, we can't stack the regulatory boards with only our own people, not in time. We do what we can to discourage the outside newcomers, and to displace those already employed with the government, but we haven't got total control of the personnel departments, nor the legislature, nor the police forces. We are not in control here, despite our best efforts, which continue even as we speak. Nazi Germany was the last place we were in control of, through our influence on Hitler and his staff.

People are on to us. Few can accept us for what we are. We encourage that "bloodsucking demons from hell" stuff, remember? But criminology, and sociology have identified statistical classes of criminals, repeat offenders, sociopaths, and habitual violent criminals, and habitual criminal lifestyles. Some of the people researching these matters are convinced that they are dealing with a different species, and in some cases they are! One faction among us views the advance of these social sciences, especially medical anthropology (where genetic structures are compared to determine degrees of relatedness) as the greatest threat ever to our kind. They believe that only by elimination of your technology (or perhaps total usurpation of control over it) can we ever be safe... I myself feel that with your technology, we can live at peace with your kind (although perhaps not openly) at long last... though most of us would be loath to give up our tricks and deceit and to "stoop to equality" with Men. Rather than forego an opportunity, so close at hand, to totally usurp the reins of control of your civilization, many of us would rather stoop and resort to such tactics as you would find most despicable, were I even able to explain them to you. There may be those of us who are actively attempting to gain control of the stockpiles of nuclear weapons left accessible by the collapse of the former Eastern Bloc. They may well succeed, and nuclear blackmail may sell your people into open slavery for all time to come... but knowing your kind as I do, I can't imagine capitulation, and I can see our Earth being laid waste, sterile for ages to come.

I'm pleading for my people and for yours.

You say, as softly as you can, I'm glad you are. But, why should you care so much, if this is the way of life you were raised into?

The beautiful vampyress suddenly is crying, crying on your shoulder, clinging with a woman's gentle insistence, but with an appalling strength. You think for a moment of a padded cell, gentle but inescapable. After a time she regains some composure, and in a low voice, not meeting your eyes, continues.

This is my shame, and my pride, that I am almost alone among my people in that I can care. You see, we are so very much like you that we can interbreed with your kind, our men leaving changelings on your women, our women preying mantis-like upon your men, all choosing the best of your best, for, living as we do, we can not afford to become noticeably different. We aren't really a different species, but we are right at the point of genetic divergence where we could all too easily become a different species. Once that happens, there's no telling what could come next for us. So we constantly interbreed with your more Normal kind. Our differences must be concealable. The traits that make us as we are, they're sometimes dominants, sometimes recessives. The need for your blood we haven't been able to isolate. Some things we can track, though the length of our generations makes it difficult.

I am one of so very few who has inherited the ability to care, to be able to feel guilt, to not be a sociopath. Among my people, most of them, this is my shame, she says, looking you in the eyes, and she touches your soul, and you feel her remorse, her angst, all of the conflicts within her, and almost, you shatter with her. Almost.

My God! you cry, and she realizes just what the shock is doing to you.

More guilt, she says. Sorry... She frees you from mindmeld. You see, now? Having a conscience, not just knowing what one is and simulating it, like a sociopath, but having one, really feeling it...

Empathy is anathema to a vampyr, at any rate more empathy than needed for successful mimicry, for passing as Normal... I believe that I have more empathy than many Normal humans. It's counter-productive, as far as preying on your kind is concerned.

For some reason, you say, being a bit of a smart-ass, that mindmeld still smarting like a new wound within your psyche, sounds like you're having a rough time living with your affliction.

Her eyes seem to light up with a sudden fire, and she states, like she might repeat a credo: It's not an affliction, it's a way of life! Then the fire is gone, and you feel sympathy, and you say to her, but you almost act as if you experience it as a terminal disease! Not that I mind, because it seems to have spared me from a horrible end...

It's a way of life, she says, but it isn't the way of life I was raised into...

That's right, you say, you were adopted.

That's right, she says. I don't know what happened, whether I was a foundling, or a changeling, or a half-breed... I was raised like anybody, like any Normal child. It would have been different had I been a hard child, one who couldn't care, who always knew I was different. I never knew. I was just a normal child, smallish for my age, maturing more slowly, but healthier, faster, stronger. Nothing remarkable, just a jockette, a gymnast... Then puberty hit hard, the hormones started cooking, and suddenly I was a young woman, becoming quite attractive, growing up fast... and hungry...

Go on to the next chapter.

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